HRV Biofeedback: Conquer Stress and Achieve Success with Dr. Leah Lagos

Episode Guest

Leah Lagos, Psy.D.

Dr. Lagos is an internationally renowned health and performance psychologist specializing in heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback. With nearly 15 years’ experience integrating the mind and body to reduce anxiety and boost resilience, Dr. Lagos is a recognized leader in peak performance training. In addition to consulting at the annual NFL scouting combine and providing onsite support on multiple PGA tours, she works with elite performers in sports, entertainment, medicine and business—from CEOs and hedge fund managers to Olympians, surgeons, and ballerinas. Above all, Dr. Lagos is a concerned, compassionate, and caring psychologist who combines biofeedback and psychological strategies to help clients achieve optimal performance in health and life. She lives and practices in New York City.

Website(s):

• About Leah
• Heart Breath Mind Program in the Elite HRV app
• Order HEART BREATH MIND on Amazon

In This Episode

Clinical psychologist and peak performance expert Dr. Leah Lagos believes stress isn’t in your head, it’s in your body. Join us as Dr. Lagos and Jason discuss biofeedback, effective breathing techniques, and the science behind the 10-week program outlined in the Elite HRV app and her new book, HEART BREATH MIND.

HEART BREATH MIND: Train Your Heart to Conquer Stress and Achieve Success (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is available August 11, 2020 in both hardcover and e-book formats.

Show Notes:
00:41 – Meet Leah Lagos

03:15 – Leah’s book “HEART BREATH MIND” and controlling emotions under pressure

11:02 – The importance of Biofeedback

15:17 – HRV and post concussion syndrome

17:50 – Fundamental principles of HRV and Biofeedback

21:00 – Systematic breathing

25:36 – What are some of the primary systems of the body that we’re activating or deactivating during this type of practice?

33:00 – What does 20 minutes of breathing practice look like?

39:30 – HRV for high blood pressure and migraines

41:00 – Leah’s 10-week program on the Elite HRV App

43:34 – Final Thoughts

Episode Transcript

JM:
Welcome back to the Elite HRV podcast. This is your host, Jason Moore. And today I’m excited to have Dr. Leah Lagos’ joining me on the show today. Leah, welcome to the show.

LL:
Hi, Jason. Excited to chat with you today.

JM:
Yeah, thanks so much, you know, you and I have had a lot of great conversations around HRV around biofeedback, around the nervous system and digging into that mind-body connection and so much more. So a quick background about you, is that not that you need to know it, but for those listening Dr. Leah Lagos’ is a clinical and sports psychologist. She’s a board certified BioTeam feedback therapist and is a trusted effective, and evidence-based thought leader in improving health and performance. And that’s kind of just the two line overview, but in getting to know Leah, what I’ve discovered is that she’s got a deep passion for not only people who are trying to stretch themselves on the top end of performance, but also people who are trying to really find a balance in their life and trying to, just approach life in a more kind of sustainable and practical way. So she spans kind of a wide area of interest, but a lot of what her practice centers around and we’ll learn more about today is biofeedback and how we can create a connection between our heart, our breath, and our mind. So I’m excited. I’m particularly excited to learn more about this stuff.

LL:
Beautiful introduction, Jason.

JM:
Oh, well, thank you. And it’s easy. You know, you’ve put a lot of work into your upcoming book, which is lo and behold titled “Heart, Breath, Mind.” And, we’re going to learn a little bit more about that book, but also all of the work that has gone into why you are even writing a book and what people can learn about biofeedback and about themselves in the process. How does that sound?

LL:
Sounds fantastic.

JM:
So kind of digging into the roots a little bit, listeners of our podcast have probably heard the term biofeedback. They’ve definitely heard the term HRV, but we’ve never framed the concept in the same way that you do around this heart breath, mind concept. And I know that that’s something that you’ve been working on for years and has kind of culminated in this book, but what is the, what are we talking about here at a high level before we kind of dig into the details?

LL:
Sure. We’re talking about a pathway starting with the heart, extending to the mind controlled by the, and affecting the whole body. And as someone who’s worked with peak performers from young chess players, all the way, people in business, people in high level athletics, the most popular question and requests as a clinical sports psychologist that I get is how can I control my emotions under pressure? And that is what sparked my interest many years ago at Rutgers in heart rate variability, biofeedback.

JM:
Hmm. That’s so powerful. I feel like no matter what you’re trying to do these days, there’s pressure from so many different angles and being able to regulate your emotions or, or just accept them or, or even recognize them, it seems like it gives you a huge competitive advantage in life.

LL:
And, you know, Jason, I feel like this is, this is really the critical point for our nation, especially with the kinds of pandemics and social uprisings that are happening, not just to learn, to control our emotions, but, but to gain, gain control over what’s happening in our body so that we can gain control over our behaviors. There are points and it happens to everybody from parents, with children to spouses, back and forth to people in the office, making executive level decisions, or, you know, a hundred million dollar or even billion dollar investments about learning to control what’s happening in their body to control what’s happening outside them, their behaviors, how they’re interacting, how they’re making decisions. And it’s remarkable. And this is so much of my passion and love for this process about the different angles it can intersect with, from kids to people in the business world, to people just looking to improve their health, their sleep migraines, blood pressure.

JM:
Oh yeah. And you know, I’m glad that you brought up kind of current events because it’s just been such a stressful time for so many people for so many different reasons. And to highlight, to give like a little tidbit of information that I’ve learned in my exposure to this world, and the world of biofeedback is kind of what I’m hinting at is breathing and gaining control. As that, I learned that it’s a common practice in first responders and in military scenarios to practice specific breathing patterns, to stay calm under pressure. And sometimes it’s called tactical breathing. , and part of what I’ve learned is that those breathing patterns are supposed to be ingrained through repetitive practice and training first under a relaxed environment and then under increasing pressure. So that there’s something that those people can go back to in those moments when they’re having to decide, do you, do you take lethal force or do you, it, can you find a different path and, you know, things like that. So

LL:
What you’re saying is so important and really a passion of mine, particularly right now, given what what’s happening in the world is for people to understand that the autonomic nervous system gets hijacked in some ways during these really stressful moments of pressure, or even just when there’s a feeling and it can bypass conscious thinking like physical aggression or their body feels threatened. And it does not justify physical force, and I’m not making that case by any means. But what I’m saying is that this type of training can be really helpful so that if the autonomic nervous system does kick in that we have high level trainings to control and for the mind to be able to click in and actually exert control over the autonomic response. , and, and the HRV biofeedback is really important. You know, tactical breathing strategies are wonderful, but one thing that the HRV does and the systematic program that I talk about in heart breath, mind, which is published by Houghton Mifflin and, and myself and coming out August 11th is a 10 week program to essentially gain a reflex that kicks in so that when your sympathetic nervous system activates, especially in times that puts it in a state of high, high, high activity, the parasympathetic nervous system will kick in to help self modulator.

LL:
Now, sometimes you still have to put insert, tactical breathing strategies. And I talk about that in the book as well, to further support bringing down the sympathetic modulation and bringing in the parasympathetics so that you have control over your mind and body. But essentially what we’re looking for is for some of that modulation the braking system from the parasympathetic to kick in on its own without even thinking. And so what we found, and this is based on [inaudible] research at Rutgers university is that the 10 week training, breathing at your resonant frequency and identified rate of breathing that maximizes heart rate variability doing this for 10 weeks at the systematic pace of 20 minutes, twice a day, renders the autonomic nervous system tighter, more in control. And that parasympathetic nervous system starts to jump in. It’s a reflex that’s trained, as we strengthen the barrel reflex. So, so the nervous system is counteracting. Some of that sympathetic dominance on its own.

JM:
I love that you said gain a reflex. And that seemed that, you know, you said it, you, you have so much experience in this domain that you said that almost as if it’s some, a given, cause you’ve seen this happen so many times with your process. But to me that jumped out as something almost profound, in that, you know, people think of reflexes like, Oh, if you drop something, your hand kind of reaches out to catch it, or if you tap your knee at the doctor’s office and you’re, you know, you kind of kick out stuff like that. Or if something scares you, you flinch right. All of these reflexes. Well, the fact that you can practice something to the point of it becoming a reflex is something that high level athletes can appreciate because they’ve done things with their body. So many times that they ended up performing the right thing under the right situation, without even being able to explain consciously how or why they did it, but for, for the mind to have a control over the nervous system and to have a reflex of gaining control of your nervous system, that’s a pretty profound statement and something that, to me just seems like I would, everybody would want that.

JM:
If you have a stressful situation and your reflex is to gain control over yourself, then that seems like it would be more powerful than a lot of others.Real quick, I want to take a step back and, you know, you mentioned a lot of different things in there that we’re gonna dig into, but I also want to just highlight one thing and that’s the concept of biofeedback and you’re a board certified biofeedback therapist. Like I said, people who’ve listened to the show have heard the term biofeedback, but why bio, why is biofeedback specifically so interesting to you in this process of practicing and training yourself to reflexively do the right thing

LL:
And achieve kind of your full level of aptitude in health and life of what’s so interesting about biofeedback and compelling is being able to see the signals from your own body, how you gain control over them and how you can change them over time and then experiencing qualitatively as you change things like your heart rhythms and the frequency of your heart rhythms, feeling qualitatively, meaning in your body, you through time that the effects in your brain, so that there’s the Vagus nerve that links the heart, the digestive track all the way up to the front of the brain, specifically that controls executive functioning. And, and what’s really phenomenal is, you know, around week four, we see what’s called bearer reflects gains, bear, reflux, controls, heart rate, and blood pressure. And it shows tighter modulation put around week seven. We start to hear, and you know, I’ve done this for so long and it’s been so interesting Jason to hear from kids to Olympians, to PGA tour players, to people in business and finance world, how it week seven, the cognitive gains that essentially are mirror because the Vagus nerve reflects what’s happening in the heart.

LL:
The 0.1 Hertz frequency is also reflected in the brain. And so you start to have people particularly prefrontal, low functioning improve. So we have clarity, we have a clearer thinking ability to let go faster, focus more. , and, and so what’s so compelling about this process is that you’re able to see, as you gain control over what’s happening in your heart, you also feel, and, and experience what’s happening in gaining control over your mind and putting those together. And so much for psychology, you know, is, is working on, on specific constructs, but they aren’t so visible. And so being able to see the change that you’re making, seeing it happen in real time and experiencing the effects can be quite compelling for a lot of clients so much so that, you know, many of my plans come for HRV biofeedback, but then open up about a host of other challenges or things that they’d like to seek help with. Cause they’ve gained so much confidence from the process of seeing their ability to control their physiology and then control their psychology.

JM:
Hmm. Yeah. I love that, emphasis on visibility and there’s just so much noise in our lives today. And it’s, you know, in some regards, people know they need to, you know, take a moment to think about their actions before they do them or eat better or sleep better, or exercise more things like that. But when you get some sort of feedback and data, that’s kind of clear and visible, it just makes it easier to recognize when you’re doing things either. You know, I don’t want to say correctly or incorrectly, but, it’s more motivating to see that when you do something it’s creating change either over time or even in real, in the moment,

LL:
What else is interesting? Jason, I’m thinking particularly in my concussion patients through time, you know, HRVs is really fantastic for patients with post concussion syndrome and what, you know, this is based on John Lenny’s research, and, a few others, and I’ve published several kind of inaugural studies in this area too using. , so John Leddy found that the people with post concussion syndrome that was refractory, meaning it didn’t remit, you know, people at six months out, even a year or two out were still experiencing massive, massive impairments. And what he found was that one of the physiological correlates was low heart rate variability. And so, so I B I started using HRV biofeedback and, and, and finding that as we improved heart rate variability, lot of their functioning was getting restored, including cognitive functioning, being able to read, again, being able to focus again, kids that were essentially an athletes that were in college, staring at the ceiling, unable to read, unable to participate at school after 10 weeks, they were, they were experiencing significant cognitive games, like being able to read 200 page book for the first time in six months.

LL:
and where I’m going with this is, is just the impact that this has on the brain and, and secondary impact is also seeing when you are someone. And I mean, even thinking about how this relates to the present day and how so much of what’s happening in this world feels like a lack of control. A lot of uncertainty about what’s happening the next day. Well, people with post concussion syndrome feel that in a very extreme way as well, they’ve lost control over what’s happening in their body, oftentimes in their minds and seeing that they can control an aspect of their lives, again, such as their heart rhythms and, and being able to amplify heart rate variability and heart and increase heart rate deceleration on demand. It’s really interesting, the psychological effect that it has for many people, kind of restoring a sense of efficacy and confidence in themselves.

JM:
And so let’s sort of break. This is amazing. No, we have so much to break down here. And, what, so what are some of the fundamental principles that we should be aware of? And I know that you go even deeper in your book on these different things, but based on your experience in the clinic, what are some of the kind of big picture principles that we should be aware of with regard to this type of trade?

LL:
That heart rate variability biofeedback is not a method for relaxation. If I’d want you to relax, it would send you to the spot. This is a process tuning or emotional modulation. So if you need to amp up faster, get excited for your podcasts, feel, you know, enthusiastic to deliver a speech to thousands of people. It will do that. If you need to essentially decelerate and quickly gain control of your emotions and, and, and kind of modulating your affect in the moment you can do that. So I explain it, you know, it’s like a PR it’s like a race car with precise navigation, and you have that ability to accelerate and decelerate just much more effortlessly and acutely on demand.

JM: Both sides of that, because not, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your flow, but, but so many people that talk about this, it’s all about the deceleration and that’s important, but you also need to be able to perform as well. Right.

LL:
That’s right. And so this tightens the modulation, so you can do both and, and create essentially the optimal, optimal conditions for emotions on demand. And it’s really incredible to practice as, as you systematically practice the HRV training, it really does the best results for 20 minutes. Twice a day. People come in from all over the world. Can I probably use the juncos do 10 minutes, twice a day for 20 weeks instead of 20 minutes, twice a day for 10 weeks, it doesn’t produce the same effect. You can use some of these processes as tactical breathing strategies and still benefit, but you don’t get the reflex that you and I talked about earlier in our conversation. And that for many of my clients is life changing. Being able to develop that reflex, that kicks in on its own to self modulator. And then you can build on tactical breathing strategies, but you want that reflex because it essentially allows you to let go in the moment to a more significant degree without any conscious activation.

JM:
And so let me know if you had more to that principals, because then I was going to ask you a little bit about some of the physiology side.

LL:
I have, I love this Jason. I’ve seen this process just really transform lives in meaningful ways. So in terms of the principles, I would encourage people that want to explore it to really make a commitment and, and do this systematically look breathing. It takes time, you know, the 10 weeks, the 20 minutes, twice a day, but it allows you to essentially create a state for optimal performance on demand. And the more you do it, you know, I tell people if you want to do it longer than 10 weeks, I believe there are three levels to this. I’ve seen clients reach three different levels of mastery, which are really fun. And the first is just, you know, in 10 weeks time, your nervous system is more fight, you know, fine tuned and you’ll experience, improved mood, decreasing anxiety, more focus, and less muscle tension. I always say, who can’t use that?

LL:
I’ll take it here. You do it, you know, another 10 or 10 to 12 weeks. And you start to really feel adapt at, at generating emotional States that are specific to situations. , you know, I had a professional coach who really oscillating mood was really important for his success in coaching. And, and he felt like the additional process I call it kind of the level two really helped him find too. And being able to also relate very quickly, I call it emotions on demand. , and, and then the third state, you know, you go above and beyond that and you tend to see people that are just recovering so much more quickly from stress, and that can happen after the first 10 weeks, but there was a significant jump in, in kind of that third tier. So it’s really interesting, you know, you can just commit to 10 weeks, but if you, you know, there are still more benefits to be had, the more you engage on the practice.

JM: Amazing. Yep. That’s great. Those are, you know, being systematic and committing. , and you know, it’s, it’s one of those things where, habit forming is a challenge, no matter what you’re trying to do, if you’re trying to change up your routine, competing, this is going to compete with, Netflix and whatever else you’re wanting to do, but it becomes something that is an investment in your future and in your health and wellbeing. And I find that when I take the time to do this, which I’m excited to do the 10 week program, is that these types of investments and other things that I’ve done, like take the time to address sleep and have just paid so many dividends in my life. , and this, I feel like is going to unlock another level for me.

LL:
Well, I, you know, as you go through it, I’ll be excited to hear the kind of results you’re experiencing for most people at week four. You know, that’s, when you feel weak one, you may feel a little less tense and week two, you might feel a little higher and that’s for anybody, but we week four, you start to experience that letting go, that happens a little more naturally the same stressors may, maybe it’s driving in gridlock. Maybe it’s a waiting line. Everyone has those triggers, but they’re just modulating. You just notice those trends, those triggers don’t create the same type of reactivity. And then the other marker that’s exciting to look for is week seven is when, you know, there are generally the start of some cognitive gains, improved focus, more cognitive clarity. I call it being able to let go of squirrels more easily. I say, we all have squirrels in our brain. You know, sometimes they fix them, but you have control. And you’re able to almost have, what’s like a screen door where you can say, ah, this is ineffective for me. I’m just going to let it go more.

JM:
Hmm that’s yeah, that’s huge. And everybody can, you know, cognitive performance is one of those things that can benefit everything. Even if your demands in your life are more physical or, or if you’re a desk athlete like at work, at a job or as a student, yeah, that cognitive performance just pays dividends. And, and Leah, I want to ask too about some of the physiology of this and in the opening series where we just talked a minute ago, you mentioned bearer receptors, parasympathetic, sympathetic, autonomic, nervous system, and a lot of different things there. What are some of the primary systems of the body that we’re activating or deactivating during this type of practice?

LL:
So our autonomic nervous system helps us stay safe and that can mean to relax center rebalance. It can also mean run across the street as fast as possible, away from something that’s chasing us in a state of survival. So there’s two systems interacting constantly, and it’s the sympathetic and the parasympathetic and their sub components of the autonomic nervous system. Our sympathetic is our survival system. It’s our fight or flight. And when it goes on, it’s meant to protect us. But the problem is that sometimes our sympathetic goes on, even when we don’t need it to maybe we had traa in our past and our system is now sensing some sort of traa. We’re not more, not even reacting at a conscious level, but it’s, it’s sensing because it’s trying to protect us. And it puts us in a hypervigilant state and it tends to state, well, that’s not particularly good for someone that’s trying necessarily to perform at their peak at that exact moment.

LL:
Then we have the parasympathetic nervous system that helps us rest, digest, self modulate. And when the parasympathetic kicks in, it’s, it’s oftentimes to help us balance and restore. And it used to be thought many, many years ago that we could just target the sympathetic. We could do tactical breathing here and there and just relax the sympathetic in the moment. And that is true. But what we found that can be even more powerful is training the parasympathetic to kick in. And so that the autonomic nervous system leans into a state of parasympathetic dominance instead of sympathetic dominance. And so the idea here is that we’re gaining control of the system. That’s the braking system. And I know that sounds like it’s going to relax you and it can, but it also can just tighten the modulation, allowing you to let go to reset and then amp up faster.

LL:
But it’s crucial for us to have a strong, active, parasympathetic nervous system to recover quickly from stressors. So let’s say you’re an athlete and you have multiple competitions within a day. I’m thinking of golfers. So, you know, on the PGA tour you’re or any, any goal situation, really you’re, you’re performing hole after hole, and you need to recover between the holes in order to perform at your peak. If you’re not, and you’re staying in that sympathetic state the entire time, you will tire more quickly. You will oftentimes lose your focus more quickly. So we want that recovery to be immediate. , and, and so one of the really profound pieces of this is that the HRV biofeedback helps to improve recovery at baseline. Meaning the recovery happens faster, following the stressor, enabling you to let go reset and then recalibrate

JM:
Yeah. You know, creating that tighter, loop where you can respond faster, ends up paying dividends. Cause I feel like these situations are, often in some cases in life, you know, stress comes and goes. And another situations it’s critical that you take action quickly. , but in either case, by being able to activate or deactivate the systems that you want to respond to the situation that you need, you don’t waste a lot of time and energy. That’s just kind of another thing that I’ve kind of noticed is that, if you have a fight or flight response and then the situation passes, but you stay amped for minutes or even hours, then it’s utilizing a lot more resources than it needs to, the responses. And, and then also you end up that ends up impacting everything that you’re doing during those, that period of time. So, there’s just, it’s, it seems like there’s a lot of power in being able to turn that on and off as needed.

LL:
Yes, very much so. And it’s incredible how it affects performance. It affects health that, you know, you think of all the things that happen in our body when, when essentially our body can’t let go or blood pressure stays high, or heart rate stays high, our muscles stay tense. And, our body just essentially can’t turn off as quickly. And as you said, and expend a lot of energy, but that can also in time create chronic health conditions.

JM:
Right? Yeah. Those, yeah. And the estimation of people who have chronic health conditions just continues to go up and up and up. And as I’m sure you’re aware, there’s an even greater number of people who are subclinical in their chronic health state. , but

LL:
It’s interesting that piece of the subclinical, I often find that a shared experience just on a psychological and physiological is, is this feeling of not being safe within the body? And it’s not necessarily just a psychological concept. It’s, it’s one that’s held by our body. So magically in ourselves and, and it, it creates kind of a systematic imbalance for many people that the breathing helps to rebalance and then also improves the cognitive feeling of safety and being able to be fully present. And, it’s not just relaxed, but being able to perform at that full level of aptitude as opposed to just a fragment, because you’re feeling rattled, you’re, you’re feeling there’s a threat, around you.

JM:
Yeah. Yeah. And some of the, the neat thing about biofeedback is it’s a, in my experience, at least it’s an unthreatening way to kind of get your foot in the door and capture your attention in addition to providing that guidance and structure and, you know, reinforcement in the practice and what does, so we talk about 20 minutes twice a day. What does the 20 minutes look like in a session that you’re recommending? What are you doing during that time?

LL:
I recommend using just a breath pacer. I’m a big advocate of taking your HRV each morning and monitoring it. So you can use it as a guide to navigate your day in terms of rest, and also kind of recovery and restoration to the body. But when you’re doing your actual breathing practice, I like just using a breath pacer and then taking, using HRV biofeedback once per month, let’s say sessions, one sessions, four, seven, and 10, or sessions one, five and 10. So that you’re not always trying to gather where, how, what your HRV is, how quickly you can decelerate your heart rate, but just enjoying the process. , and so you can just use it, use a breath patient and, and send it to your resonant, frequency and breathe. But it’s really important to turn off all the stimuli in your environment, including music, after doing this for 10 weeks, then you can use music.

LL:
But until then, I find with patients that the best way to enhance heart rate variability is to sit, match your breath to the pastry and have no other distractions. You know, kids run in, they run out, that’s fine. You just bring your attention back, but not doing this well, you’re making lunch or not doing this while you’re trying to drive. I’m not doing this while you’re watching TV, really just matching your breath to the patient. And what’s interesting is that so little bit of a two for one, meaning it’s a little bit of brain training while you’re increasing your heart rate, variability. Why? Because you’re matching your breath to the pacer. And what that involves is attention and attention is the prefrontal lobe. So we’re training, we’re stimulating the prefrontal lobe while we’re invariably increasing oxygen and blood flow to it through heart rate, variability, biofeedback.

JM:
Hmm. The attention pieces. I imagine, one of the kind of secret underlying challenges and side benefits of this whole exercise as well for a lot of,

JM:
It’s a, it’s, it’s a challenge to focus on something for 20 minutes. If it’s in this modern time, not, got, flashing lights and blood and guts and, you know, all sorts of other, activities going on with all the entertainment that we have today. And, you know, one thing that people say, you know, meditation is exploding in popularity at the moment. And meditation has been productized in a way, with a lot of kind of entertaining elements added to it. , but this is a, this is almost akin to kind of going back to the roots of attention and focus and, not to say there’s anything wrong with the, approaching meditation in many different ways, but this is different, right? This is bringing awareness and focus, to a specific system, systematic practice,

LL:
Right? And some of the effects are similar, but not all. In fact, I have a lot of people that come to me, Jason, after many, many years of meditation and, and this does something slightly different. It has some similar effects and some that are very different. So some of the differences are that people that have meditated for many years may not experience the same improvements in sleep quality and sleep duration as they do through HRV biofeedback, blood pressure lowering is something that many clients experience from HRV by a few bits that they don’t experience the meditation learning to be able to modulate emotions in the moment, my clients who are meditators say it is stronger through HOV biofeedback, having their being able to clear their mind. Many of my clients say is a little stronger through meditation. So my clients who meditate avidly say the biggest difference for them between this meditation is being able to control their emotions.

LL:
And in stressful situations is much higher in HRV, biofeedback. They lean on the meditation piece sometimes, and it’s very individual specific, but for, for clearing the mind. So it’s interesting, I believe, you know, there’s the Wim Hof breathing, there’s meditation. There’s each of your biofeedback…more has to be investigated. I believe these illicit different frequencies in the heart and in the brain. And what’s really incredible about resonant frequency, which is demarcated as 0.1 Hertz, in the heart and actually have found for MRIs of people breathing at resonant frequency for five minutes. At that point, one Hertz begins to pop up in the brain, which is interesting. And I’ve seen resonant, frequency, breathing, heal pieces of my clients that I didn’t even imagine at the time could heal them, cyclical, vomiting, people with very, very high blood pressure. And, and that one is, is, is now much more frequently.

LL:
HRV is used much more frequently for helping to regulate blood pressure, but very high blood pressure and migraines. I had one client who’s given me permission. She’s in my book to talk about her who had migraines for over 15 years and went to at least 12 doctors. And it didn’t work. It didn’t work: medication, pharmacology, it didn’t work for her. And HRV biofeedback, I said, I can’t promise they will go away completely, but they will reduce in severity and they will reduce in duration. And they did to such a degree that she said it was life changing for her and send me her friends and her family. So this resonant frequency is really fascinating from the HRV standpoint. I see it Jason, as a healing energy, and I’ve seen it heal pieces of people that is, is really incredible from health to helping to even restore relationships. And how does, how does heart rate variability help relationships hold when people have control over their emotions, they’re able to be there. They’re beautiful part of them, as opposed to the defensive part of them. The part that can be generous and altruistic and nurturing and supportive, as opposed to, you know, a critical even an oppressive partner.

JM:
Hmm. Please, impact so many areas of life. Well, I think, you know, we, one of the things that I’m particularly excited about is that as we’ve built our relationship, Leah, is that I’ve been exposed to these concepts through you and through, just kind of research in general, but it’s something that I’m excited to see coming together into one single digestible work that people can pick up, even if they don’t have a deep background in this subject matter. , you can really understand and follow along with the heart breath, mind protocol, and to make it easier as well. Leah and our team have worked together to add the 10 week program right into the elite HRV app. And we’re going to have a landing page set up on the website that will give you more information about that and Leah’s book, but I’m excited to deploy that into the elite HRV app.

JM:
So people can follow along, find your resonant, frequency, breathing pattern, and then follow the breathing pacer that we’ve talked about here. And, and then the book is there for reference and coming out very soon, you said August 11th, that’s fantastic. And there’s so much more information to unpack from the book. And so, but it’s just, presented very well and easy to follow along. , and there’s, this is a subject that like you mentioned, has been under-researched for decades. , but a lot of the research is very specific on a specific area or domain. , like you mentioned very specifically about blood pressure or very specifically about, decelerating autonomic nervous system. And, while all of that has contributed heavily to where we are today, it’s it hasn’t been packaged in such a way that the average person cutting through the noise of their own life and all the goals that they have can pick it up, understand it, and follow a program that they can know has been proven and used extensively in your clinical experience, in your practice. Leah. So, I’m excited about all of that.

LL:
I am so excited too. This is just such a life transforming process for so many of my clients from all different ages and backgrounds. And I’m just, I am so excited for people all over the world to be able to experience it too, from their own homes via the heart breath, mind program on the lead HRV app, and also be at the

JM:
Perfect, well, you know, we’ve covered a lot and people can look for that program in the app and also on the website and we’ll have links to Leah and her book and, Dr. Leah Lagos’ thank you so much for joining us today. , and I imagine we have many more great conversations ahead of us. I just really appreciate your time.

LL:
I appreciate yours too. Thank you so much, Jason. It was so much fun to talk to you today. Thank you.